Eastern Ontario Bioenergy Feasibility Study

KINGSTON, ON — Shelagh McDonald, Executive Director of elorin, is pleased to announce that the Eastern Ontario Bioenergy Feasibility Study is successfully underway and nearing completion, with the final report to be released in March 2007 for public consumption.

The objective of the Bioenergy Feasibility Study is to assess the feasibility of building a profitable 10MW bioenergy facility under Ontario’s Standard Offer Program initiative.

One of the key elements to the potential success of this Standard Offer Program is guaranteed supply either through the forestry or agriculture community. Assessing this availability is a critical first step. The Feasibility Study will also provide an analysis of available technologies to determine which technologies work best with various types of feedstocks from forestry, agriculture, and organic waste (technologies under assessment include co-firing, landfill and digester gases, gasification, liquid pyrolysis, and biodiesel cogeneration). In addition, the Bioenergy Feasibility Study will examine a range of ownership and financial models, and conduct market research into potential financing partners for a given ownership model.

Economic benefits of the Bioenergy Feasibility Study will focus on rural economic development creating income generation for feedstock providers, direct employment, and ownership groups (which may include farmers). The region will benefit through the education of stakeholders (farmers, woodlot owners, municipal governments, etc.) on the opportunities coming out of the Standard Offer Program. This will put the region in a leadership position in North America for Standard Offer Program projects in biomass.

The Bioenergy Feasibility Study will not only result in opportunities to implement a biomass facility within the Eastern Lake Ontario region, but could also be used as a model for replication in other areas, provincially and beyond.

Background

elorin received funding to conduct the Bioenergy Feasibility Study through the Eastern Ontario Development Program (EODP) as part of a Regional Biomass Project, in partnership with the Renfrew County Community Futures Development Corporation (CFDC). The Regional Biomass Project includes the establishment of Bioenergy Focus
Ontario and the delivery of a series of community workshops on bioenergy.